Technologies within the RISC OS community are like sunny days in England, nothing for ages and then you're treated to a week of them. We refer you to USB cards and 100MBit NICs and now SSH.

RISC OS software that provides SSH has always been heavily sought; An example being on the Nettle mailing list, some time ago one user offered cash to see SSH developed into Nettle, the established open source telnet application. Earlier this week, drobe.co.uk also reported Alex Macfarlane Smith's SSH software.

Now it's Justin Fletcher's time to pull the golden cord and reveal from the red curtains, NettleSSH, an experimental branch of Nettle that has SSH built in.

"NettleSSH is an experimental spin-off from the Nettle terminal client which supports new protocols and has a more experimental structure", explains Justin in an email to drobe.co.uk.

According to Justin, NettleSSH features:

New protocols support: RExec, RLogin, SSH 1

Improved key handling on certain windows.

Large scale changes to the internals.

As the main Nettle branch is updated, NettleSSH will also be updated and benefit from new features and such developments. Justin stresses that because NettleSSH is experimental, some features usually in Nettle might not work and documentation on this new branch will be lax. Comments about NettleSSH should be sent direct to Justin.

Justin finally adds, "I would like to thank the testers of NettleSSH in its various versions, and in particular to Alex and the core Nettle developers for their work and their criticisms of this project."

For those not in the know, SSH is the popular protocol that enables users to securely log into remote machines using various encryption techniques.

Also, Nettle developer Alex has been hinting that Nettle version 3 will soon enter development.

Welcome back to Drobe.co.ukThanks for dropping by and visiting Drobe.co.uk, your source of RISC OS news and information. We're getting towards the end of our little refurbishment of this website, which includes the new ability to post threaded comments, and as well as ramping up the number of updates, we'll be gradually bringing back familiar services, such as the front page poll and the events calender. Email us your news and views.45 comments, latest by wrankin42 on 17/11/08 9:26PM. Published: 9 Nov 2008